I have, however, seen every single episode of Three’s Company. And Benson. And at least 95% of the entire Law & Order series.

This weekend I found myself in a maternity store on the Upper East Side, where I saw strange and terrible things I never knew existed: bras with snaps, maxi-pads for boobs (?!), Sevens with an eight-inch strip of black elastic sprouting from the waistband. At the register they sold boxes of hard candies called Preggie-Pops. I looked at the ingredients list. It was nothing but brown rice syrup and flavoring, but the price was $6 for 30 lozenges because the box featured a picture of a circular woman smiling in a field. She had one sweater tied around her neck and another sweater flung casually over her shoulder. Perhaps this is normal, for the Preggie-Pops demographic.

Things make sense according to what you know. You live in your rickety wooden frame of reference built from scraps of interest, memory and circumstance, and every now and then you realize there are strangers outside the window and they’re speaking in tongues. Do you need a translator, or do they?

I don’t know. I’m tired, I guess. I know how to say milk in Polish (mleczny) and I know the way to Waldoboro (up Route 1, hang a right). Everything else will have to wait.

In case you couldn’t stomach it yourself, the Palin tribute shows a clip from her Jan. 19, 2009 appearance on Beck’s inaugural Fox News show:

BECK: I think the problem with most politicians is they haven’t been at a Wendy’s drive-through in quite some time. You know what I mean? They’ve never actually said, “Yeah, just give me a Frosty, please, with the Oreos crunched up inside.” I think that’s a problem. I’m gonna ask politicians, “When was the last time, Governor, that you were at a Wendy’s and had a Frosty? And you ordered it yourself.”

Now flash back to the December 10, 2008 episode of Beck’s radio show, in which he described his speaking tour in Idaho:

BECK: The only problem with it was, I’m sorry, Idaho, but you have far too many signs that say “Next exit, 47 miles.” And when you are at least 47 miles away and you can’t trust that that exit has some sort of dispenser that could give you a Frosty, I just don’t know. You know what I’m saying?

Some guy named STU: It’s very, very understandable, Glenn, when you are away from Wendy and her services. I know you get very disappointed.

Mind you, this was just one month after Beck suffered a horrific assault at a Wendy’s where he was “going to get Frosties” because “everyone wants a Frosty.” You’d think the trauma of being verbally attacked by a racist Nazi truck driver might sour a man on this particular brand of frozen corn syrup, whey, and cellulose gum, but apparently not.

I can’t find any mention of an official deal between Wendy’s and Beck, but it seems to me a savvy fast-food exec might start thinking up ways to monetize this shillfest — also too, I hear Glenn could use a side of sponsorships with his Frosty these days. (They are delicious if you dip them.)

A few years ago I tried to popularize the term ‘braffed,’ a word to indicate a situation that has been overwhelmed by irritating mediocrity. Example: “Argh! My boss rewrote my presentation and put three typos in it!” “Man, you got braffed.” It never caught on, but once I tested the Ruined Music email list software by sending myself a message that read “Test test, you got braffed,” and in a stroke of misfortune, sent the message to the entire list. I braffed myself!

Zooey Deschanel
I want to think I’m wrong on this. Maybe if I hung out with Zooey Deschanel we’d discover that we have sooooo much in common, and we’d run around the Lower East Side shopping for adorable vintage bracelets, and she’d convince me to cut my hair in thick chunky bangs, and then we’d drink kombucha and giggle and swing our purses as we skipped down the street and then a unicorn would fly overhead and vomit glittery stars and we’d hold hands and promise to be BFs for F. It’s possible.

Then again maybe not.

Conor Oberst
Hey Conor. Yeah, look, a lot of people didn’t like George W. Bush. Most of us were able to deal with this without resorting to tripe like “Does God suggest an oil hike when the president talks to God?,” but then again most of us are not bugeyed professional daydreamers in Prada suits. Aw, I’m sorry, did I hurt your feelings? Quick, someone get Conor an absorbent sweater, I think he’s going to cry.

Sandra Lee
I have seen this lady on television maybe three times in my life, on account of not having cable (move to Canada you goddamn commie), but three times was enough to convince me. Plus surely you’ve seen the mashup clips that are circulating on the internet, this one being the best/worst (pet peeve: ‘expresso’), via Salad & Candy:

***BONUS: A Person I Have Already Punched in a Bar***

Sufjan Stevens. Except it wasn’t in a bar, it was on the sidewalk outside a bar, and it wasn’t an angry punch, more like a friendly one. Also he was very drunk so I don’t think he felt it.

Very early this morning I decided to take a walk, so I got dressed and headed up the hill and down the gravel path and past the horse pasture and onto the paved road, in what I might’ve termed good spirits if my mind hadn’t been completely blank. For the first mile and a half I was alone with the music and the squirrels and a couple of these birds I’ve seen lately (Kind of heron-like? Storkish? Except brown, and in a field? Ornithologists?), but then I hove over an incline and spotted two people, one about 1/10th of a mile away, and another about 1/10th of a mile past that.

So the first coherent thought I had today was that if these two people and I were standing at 1/10th mi. intervals in another context, an empty airplane hangar, for example, we would have no choice but to ask each other what we were doing and what caused us to be there. But because we were all on this little-trafficked road in the woods in the morning we didn’t feel the need to say anything, we just gave nods of understanding as we passed.

Gent, to Cashier, in a tone of Confidence: That was my ex-wife, y’know. Just left. With that fella.
Cashier, to Gent: Oh re-ally? That planned?
Gent: Whaddya mean?
Cashier: She here cause you were?
Gent: Naw.
Cashier: She say hi?
Meaningful pause.
Gent: Yep.
Cashier: Well then.
Gent: Oh, I mean- she gimme a ride th’other day, so, you know.
Cashier: Okay.
Gent: But I tell you what, she did see me out with a girl, too.
Cashier: Oh, well. There ya go.

¹“Christy’s coffee! It’s just like coffee, except made with sewage!”
²New magazines.

…identify ‘em all and I’ll buy you a hot dog and a box of sparklers.

…it’s not my favorite skyscraper, it’s not the roof of the Met, it’s not the bridges, it’s not the statuary. Mostly it’s the bleary light on the tiles and the free papers in the gutter and the sharp smell of dyed carnations. It’s the traffic island at the mouth of Second Avenue and the sensation of giving yourself over to other people’s movement.

My point is, New York, I’ll see you tomorrow. It’s been a while and I want to get real mundane with you.

Yet as he spends his days in his family’s mansion on the outskirts of Chapel Hill, N.C., Edwards can’t help but fret about how Washington and the country are getting on in his absence.

That John Edwards! Always thinking of others, etc. etc.

Only thing is — and if wanton displays of naïveté aren’t your bag, you should leave right now — I liked this guy. No. I believed in this guy. Not so much in previous campaigns, or when he was yoked, uneasily, to Gore. This time around it was different. (Maybe I was just extra-susceptible.) Sure, the “son of a millworker” schtick wore thin. A lot of people heard it and called it phony, coming from a millionaire trial lawyer. Me, I thought about the men and women I knew who’d stitched shirts for a living, and the way the 4 p.m. sun shone straight through the empty brick buildings in my hometown. I thought: self-made wealth doesn’t mean you can’t understand that. I thought: some people become lawyers because they believe everyone deserves a representative in the halls of justice. That’s why my parents became lawyers, though in the middle of rural Maine lawyers aren’t millionaires.

I’m biased. It’s true. We all are. We gravitate toward politicians who best reflect the particular beliefs and values and ideas we’ve absorbed in our lives, from our parents, our schools, our communities. And it just so happened that I was raised with a certain set of beliefs and experiences, and these included things like soup kitchens and Dorothy Day and serviam, to say nothing of George Orwell and Upton Sinclair. And here comes John Edwards, shaking off his Ken-doll coma, speaking reasonably directly and with a believable (inasmuch as any of this is believable) passion, and with good ideas to boot. It was a hard time. I had no illusions left to lose, and I wanted to believe in something.

I am not a sucker, not often, anyway. But what can you do when you grew up with Pete Seeger and dinner table conversation about homelessness and a man in a suit uses his podium to say this:

I have walked into courtrooms alone to face an army of corporate lawyers with all the money in the world. I have walked off the Senate elevator and been besieged by an army of corporate lobbyists. And I have beaten them over and over again.

But let me tell you one thing I have learned from my experience — you cannot deal with them on their terms. You cannot play by their rules, sit at their table, or give them a seat at yours. They will not give up their power — you have to take it from them.

Don’t lecture me about speechwriters and strategists. I’ve been paid good money to put inspiring words in other people’s mouths. I know how this game goes, and even in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, I believed.

Which is why, without telling anyone, I decided to enroll in the Democratic party for the first time in my life, a fact that might amuse those peg me as a rank-and-file lefty. Since my 18th birthday, which I celebrated by going to City Hall and registering to vote, I’d clung to my flanneled-Yankee Independent status on principle, even though it meant forgoing Maine’s lively caucus proceedings. I was in New York in 2006-07, so I mailed in my request for a change of party and an absentee ballot for the Maine Democratic caucus.

While I waited for my registration to be confirmed I spent a lot of time in debate with my politically-engaged friends, all of whom were squarely in the tank for Barack Obama. I stayed up late and woke up early to read speeches and policy reports, sending emails with side-by-side comparisons of health care plans, arguing and defending the man I wanted to be president — although, see above re: illusions, I knew full well he’d lose.

I could not afford make large contributions, much as I wanted to; New York rent and student loans and a useless freelancers’ health insurance policy brought my balance to zero each month. I did, however, hear that a family friend was doing some sort of organizing work with the Edwards campaign, slated to be on the ground in New Hampshire and then South Carolina, and I began investigating the logistics of a bus to Greenville. Work commitments made it impossible. I decided it was all right: the most important thing would be my vote in the Maine caucus.

South Carolina Democrats voted on January 26, nominating Barack Obama by a decisive margin. Four days later I sat on the floor and cried harder than I could remember crying over anything in years, and somehow I didn’t even have the presence of mind to feel embarrassed. John Edwards looked tired, there in New Orleans. He stumbled over a few words and squinted in the wind. He waved and it was over. I sat on the floor for a long time after the newscast moved on to whatever else was happening that afternoon.

The next day I received confirmation of my enrollment in the Maine Democratic Party.

I wish I could tell you how I felt when news of the affair broke. I think for a long time I felt nothing, on purpose. Very few people knew the extent of my emotional commitment to his primary campaign, and for the most part they were tactful. I made careful show of shrugging, but I found myself reading every article, looking at the photos, watching the videos. The story was squalid. His attempt at spin was even more so. The knives came out but for once I couldn’t muster a word, no scorn, no outrage, no jokes. The whole thing seemed small and exhausting.

Eventually I realized that what I felt was resignation, that and the cold slap of inevitability. I had been foolish. I chose to believe in an idea of someone, an idea of someone’s ideals — a politician, no less. I knew better. It’s a lesson I won’t forget again and for that, more than anything, I’m grateful.

*Full disclosure: I did, in the end, joke about it. But not well.

I would like to dedicate this list to the hapless intern who could’ve used it.

Approved for nickname clearance:

• Relatives, including and limited to parents, sibling, aunts, uncles, first cousins.
• Anyone who was my doubles partner on the Waterville Senior High tennis team.
• Anyone who contributed to my zine. Oh, and Mike and Trey (who I think just ran ads, but count anyway).
• Anyone who lived on a hill in Worcester between the years 1995 and 1999 AND took classes with my favorite professor OR lived in Hanselman in 1994 or 1995 AND doesn’t suck.
• Anyone with whom I have been in a band (that has played at least one show in public).
• Anyone who has spent more than half an hour on the roof of 510 Clinton St. AND knows at least three people who have been on the lease there.
• Anyone with whom I have spent more than one hour in a coffee shop within the past two years, on more than two occasions.

Not approved for nickname clearance:

• Everyone else.

While I’m at it, NO:

• “Where’s your lamb?”
• “How does your garden grow?”
• Blah blah blah “contrary”
• “Why you buggin’?”
• “Along comes”
• Blah blah blah hyphen confusing wah wah punctuation in name it’s too complicated, little dash-shaped mark, cannot process

YES:

• “It’s a grand old name!”